Do you have to have CD-RW with a CD-ROM

[jm]

Some systems I have seen have both the CD-ROM and the CD-RW. Others have
just a CD-RW. Is there any advantage to NOT having the CD-ROM and having
the CD-RW only? Thanks.

 

[Richard Dower]

Some systems I have seen have both the CD-ROM and the CD-RW. Others have
just a CD-RW. Is there any advantage to NOT having the CD-ROM and having
the CD-RW only? Thanks.

I have have a Plextor Premium as Primary Master with the Plextor PX-116A
DVD-ROM set as Slave.

What i would suggest is you get either a DVD/CD-RW combo drive or get two
separate drives.

 

[jm]

I have have a Plextor Premium as Primary Master with the Plextor PX-116A
DVD-ROM set as Slave.

What i would suggest is you get either a DVD/CD-RW combo drive or get two
separate drives.

Thanks. Why would I want two drives if the CD-RW does the job of the CD-ROM
and the CD-RW?

 

[Coridon Henshaw]

Why would I want two drives if the CD-RW does the job of the CD-ROM
and the CD-RW?

CDRWs tend to have shorter lifespans and higher seek times than read-only
drives. The main reason for having both a CDROM and a CDRW is to minimize
wear and tear on the CDRW. It's not as much of an issue as it used to be
as CDRWs aren't all that much more expensive (in absolute terms) than CDROM
drives and are cheap enough to replace when they break down.

 

[Larc]

| Some systems I have seen have both the CD-ROM and the CD-RW. Others have
| just a CD-RW. Is there any advantage to NOT having the CD-ROM and having
| the CD-RW only? Thanks.

No, although it's not generally much of a disadvantage to have only a CD-RW. If
you want to copy a CD, there's an extra step involved without a CD-ROM. The CD
has to be copied to the hard drive before it can be recorded rather than being
recorded directly from the source CD.

The only other advantage to having both I can think of is that it doesn't put
100% of the workload on a single unit.

Larc



§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§

 

[Richard Dower]

Thanks. Why would I want two drives if the CD-RW does the job of the CD-ROM
and the CD-RW?

Various reasons, you may want to copy CD to CD directly, and having two
drives will do this for you. Or you could just create an image file and burn
it...as most people do.

That's why i suggested a combo drive, you get DVD-ROM, CD-ROM and CD-RW in
one unit. Or if you really wanna go wild get a DVD-R/RW drive that also acts
as a DVD-ROM + CD-RW.

I'd recomend Plexor myself, Lite-On are also cool.

 

[Richard Dower]

CDRWs tend to have shorter lifespans and higher seek times than read-only
drives. The main reason for having both a CDROM and a CDRW is to minimize
wear and tear on the CDRW. It's not as much of an issue as it used to be
as CDRWs aren't all that much more expensive (in absolute terms) than CDROM
drives and are cheap enough to replace when they break down.

Very much the reason why i went for the two Plextor drives, to use one to do
DAE and the other to burn. Thus it will give the CD-RW a longer lifespan.

 

[Strontium]

I've copied 'dive to drive' for over 2yrs, now (on the fly, I might add...).
Only coasters I've seen are from copy protected CD's. Alcohol 120 takes
care of that little glitch.

To OP, always have a reader (regular CD-ROM, in addition whatever burner you
have). Copying music CD's, to the hard drive first, is just for those that
like sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
-

 

[tomcas]

Yes, you save money. While having two drives allows for potentially
faster copying of CDs by copying on the fly, in reality unless you have
more than two IDE channels you will hardly see the difference in copying
speed. The reason is that in order to avoid slowing down the hard drive
the CD drive would be installed on a different channel. This leaves
the two CD drives together on the secondary channel and only one device
per channel can function at a time.

 

[John E. Carty]

Yes, you save money. While having two drives allows for potentially
faster copying of CDs by copying on the fly, in reality unless you have
more than two IDE channels you will hardly see the difference in copying
speed.

The reason is that in order to avoid slowing down the hard drive
the CD drive would be installed on a different channel.

This is not an issue on any modern system

 

[alvin york]

Hi JM!

With just a cd-rw drive and no separate cd-rom drive, copying cd-disks
becomes a must harder chore than if you have both.

CD-ROM drives are relative inexpensive these days.

 

[Gary Tait]

Some systems I have seen have both the CD-ROM and the CD-RW. Others have
just a CD-RW. Is there any advantage to NOT having the CD-ROM and having
the CD-RW only? Thanks.

For a modern system, not really. For me, I have my Zip drive on the
same IDE chain as my CDRW.

 

[Conor]

Why would I want two drives if the CD-RW does the job of the CD-ROM
and the CD-RW?

CDROM drive £15, CDRW drive £60. You have a CDROM drive so you don't
wear out the CD Writer.

--
________________________
Conor Turton
(e-mail address removed)
ICQ:31909763
________________________

 

[Richard Dower]

CDROM drive £15, CDRW drive £60. You have a CDROM drive so you don't
wear out the CD Writer.

Exactly!

 

[Wayne]

I used my HP CD-RW drive as my only CD drive for 4 years ... it was still
going strong until I replaced it with my new Sony DVD RW which also does
CD-R and CD RW. So its possible to get along with 1 drive just fine.

 

[tomcas]

John
Is this reference wrong?
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance-c.html

"Hard Disk and ATAPI Device Channel Sharing: There are several reasons
why optical drives (or other ATAPI devices) should not be shared on the
same channel as a fast hard disk. ATAPI allows the use of the same
physical channels as IDE/ATA, but it is not the same protocol; ATAPI
uses a much more complicated command structure. Opticals are also
generally much slower devices than hard disks, so they can slow a hard
disk down when sharing a channel. Finally, some ATAPI devices cannot
deal with DMA bus mastering drivers, and will cause a problem if you try
to enable bus mastering for a hard disk on a channel they are using. "

Tom

 

[Jim Strand]

Alcohol 120 takes care of that little glitch.

?????
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delete "nospam" for e-mail reply
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[Strontium]

It's a burning/reading program.

-
Jim Strand stood up, at show-n-tell in
(e-mail address removed) and said:

 

[Strontium]

For years, I ran my burner and CD-ROM on a separate channel, together. And,
my HDD's on their own channel. Recently, I switched to having my burner
slaved to my primary master HDD, and my CD-ROM slaved to my secondary master
HDD. I've noticed (in about a month's time) no noticeable decrease in
performance.

-
tomcas stood up, at show-n-tell in (e-mail address removed) and
said:

 

[Ed Light]

This is not an issue on any modern system

I have my CDRW as master to a hard drive in a removable tray. The HD
benchmarks just great.

kt400 chipset.